This article is from the register located at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/09/symantec_said_to_be_selling_veritas_to_private_equity_firm/

Symantec’s soon-to-be-split-off Veritas business is destined for private equity ownership, according to Bloomberg.The buyer is said to be the Carlyle Group and it will pay something between $7bn and $8bn for a business, which has forecast $2.6bn annual revenues.It’s been noted for some time that there is no CEO identified for Veritas, whereas the Symantec side of the business has Michael Brown in place.HP – which is similarly separating itself into two businesses – has its two CEOs identified. Often, a PE buyer of a business will install their own CEO, as is he case with Jonathan Huberman running the Syncplicity business for Skyview Capital.Symantec bought Veritas for $13.5bn in 2005, so it’s making a rather large loss on the deal, if it takes place.A sale to PE would raise guaranteed cash, whereas turning Veritas into a publicly treaded business would give it shares, which it would have to sell at a price set by the market over a longish period, so as not to depress the share price.Veritas has four lines of business:

Backup and recovery software (NetBackup and Backup Exec)

Appliances

Information availability

Information intelligence – archiving, e-discovery, etc

Most revenue comes from the backup software, where Symantec is a Gartner-anointed big player, along with EMC, IBM and CommVault. Growth is low, however, and new players such as Veeam are growing much faster.